Matsukura Laboratory

companyname

Research area for Fundamental Genetic Engineering and Molecular Breeding Technologies

Staff(s) Professor. Chiaki MATSUKURA,
Assistant Professor. Satoko NONAKA
Field of research Horticultural Sciences, Plant Molecular Breeding, Agrobacterium-mediated Transformation, Environmental Stress Response
Research topics – Studies on regulation manner of starch metabolism and its physiological function in tomato fruit
– Studies on the cross-talk mechanism between metabolic regulation of carbon and amino acid and abiotic stress
– Development of new nutrition in melon and tomato
– Establishment of transformation techniques in horticultural crops,
– Development of new Agrobacterium with higher transformation frequency
Keywords Tomato, Melon, Super-Agrobacterium, Plant Tissue Culture, Transformation techniques, Starch, Sugar metabolism, Abiotic stress response
URL http://tsukuba-olericulture.org/
http://matsukura-labo.sakura.ne.jp/index.html
TEL 029-853-7734
E-mail matsukura.chiaki.fw@u.tsukuba.ac.jp
nonaka.satoko.gt@u.tsukuba.ac.jp

Research introduction

Matsukura’s group
  • To gain a better understanding of physiological role(s) of carbohydrates and amino acids in fruit quality and development, our research group focuses on starch and GABA metabolism and their use during fruit development of tomato, which represents an ideal plant model for many fruit species. We have also investigated the cross-talk of metabolic regulation of carbon and amino acid and abiotic stress such salinity. Additionally, we are trying to produce high value-added tomato resources with high sugar and/or GABA contents through screening of mutants and generation of transgenic lines.
Nonaka’s group
  • Tomato and melon are one of the most important vegetable crops in the world. These two crops contain huge variety of species in the world. For effective use of the attractive materials, functional genomics tools are required. Therefore, for the last decade, many studies have been addressed the tools, such as EST collections, and omics database, genetic linkage maps, DNA markers, BAC libraries, a mutation library, and transformation techniques. Although the transformation is a key technique for functional genomics research, the frequency is not enough for the practical use. Therefore, the research efforts have been undertaken in order to establish the efficient transformation protocol in melon. In our laboratory,